Persona Charts

Multiple Personalities

This article is an abridged
and adapted extract from the book "Die innere Tafelrunde"
("The inner round table") by Peter Orban and Ingrid Zinnel. The book is available in German at www.astronova.de.
Edited and translated by Karin Hoffmann.

Danny is a kicking
and screaming 7-year-old, always on the lookout for trouble, and
not very popular with anyone.
Rosalind, 31 years of age, gentle, melancholic, and charming can
melt the hearts of most people.
Jennifer has had more lovers in the 22 years of her life than she
can count. She is mentally retarded and has only one thing on her
mind: the quick fuck with a stranger. Post coital her mind goes
blank.
J ohn, although only 34, is one of the most successful lawyers in
town. His jurisdical logic is irresistible, opponents fear his powerful
addresses to the jury.
The Ripper, an ageless, almost blind man, is barbarous, brutal and
evil like a nightmare. Full of hatred, he goes around at night with
razor blades and glowing fag ends.

All of them, the terrible
child, the warm-hearted woman, the nymphomaniac, the successful
lawyer, the evil old rascal, and many more characters of different
descriptions, are contained within one body. This body belongs to
a woman lawyer, who is called Marianna Lipton, 168 cm tall, and
46 years of age. And apart from the fact that she had suffered from
unbearable psychological anguish at times, these were - until a
few years ago - the only things she could know about herself for
certain.

Marianna and the
one and a half dozen therapists who had treated her from the age
of 19 could not find any explanation of the forces which seemed
to tear her apart - until the psychiatrist Frank Putnam diagnosed
an illness which belongs to the most mysterious neuro-psychotic
syndromes of all: Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).This
is what experts call a kind of personality disorder which is hard
to diagnose and even harder to cure.

The Ego of an MPD-Patient
is split up into numerous, completely different personalities who
are in constant interchange and determine the psyche and the actions
of the patient. It is like a psycho-drama become real, varied and
multi-layered, in which the "multiple" embodies all roles. (DER
SPIEGEL, Year 43, 1989, Vol. 37, p. 220)

What modern psychiatrists
describe as MPD, is - and this is our claim - not a special case
in the development of the human psyche, but simply an outwardly
noticeable view of what goes on inside every single one of us. Each
of us has these multiple personalities inside ourselves, but they
are not as excessively and obsessively in war with each other as
with an MPD patient. They influence most people and their every
day lives in an unobtrusive and unnoticeable manner.

You may find the idea
that every individual contains several different personalities quite
surprising, especially if you have just got used to the thought
that the aim of man is to achieve unity. We do believe in unity,
too. But still: Man as he exists today is not only schizophrenic,
but polyphrenic, and he can hardly succeed in wanting unity, if
he is not prepared to look at his fragmented self first. Therefore,
our theory does not deal with the one visible person, but with the
invisible person or with the soul or psyche of man which is multiple
and manifold. We want to follow the tracks of the manifold.

What is a Persona Chart?

The
birth horoscope is a "script of life" which gives me an exact overview
of my "drama". If we translate the horoscope drawing into a view
of a stage, the circle of the horoscope becomes the circle of the
stage, and the planets turn into people or actors.

Every
single person in the drama has his or her very own history, has
individual energies, individual needs, has weaknesses and strengths,
and individual physical and psychological responses. Each person
has an individual way of going through life, as well as an individual
path to consciousness.

The
birth horoscope represents these twelve characters in their particular
arrangement as parts of the whole. We want to show a new way of
looking at the chart. We do not look at the whole, but consider
its parts. We will not forget, of course, that whole is more than
the sum of its parts. And we keep in mind that we will do what we
are doing now only for a limited period of time. But we will do
it anyway.

We
learn a method by which we can take out a single one of these inner
personalities, and look at it closely and independently from the
others for a while. The birth chart provides us with little information
about this personality: we only know the zodiacal sign, its house
placing, and its relations with other planetary personalities. This
is not a vast amount of information. For this reason we will take
a step which might sound outrageous at first: we cast an individual
horoscope for this inner personality.

The
individual characters on the stage of my life have birth dates themselves,
i.e. they have to "come to light". This phrase contains the secret
of their birth. They are born the moment the Sun, which has brought
me (my outer self) to light (for example on 22.8.62, at 13h22),
reaches this inner personality for the first time and thus "brings
it to light". If Mars in this horoscope is 26 degrees 42 minutes
Aquarius, the Sun reaches the "warrior" on 3.2.63 at 1h32. Now,
I have the dates I need for Mars' horoscope: the birth date of the
"warrior".

In technical terms: A Persona
Chart is the chart for the first transit of the Sun over the
position of another natal planet. All Persona Charts 'happen'
within the first year after a person's birth, when the Sun makes its
first circle around it, and 'wakes up' one subpersona after the other.

We
call this horoscope a "persona chart". For one, this horoscope describes
one of my inner "personalities", and secondly, it is derived from
"per-sonare" and therefore associated with the motif of "that which
rings through". Each of the inner personalities rings through the
whole consisting of all the other personalities. A special sound
rings through the whole chart. An individual sound!

This
inner personality has - an ascendant - a ruler of the first house
- a Sun, which is always the protagonist (because the Sun take the
place which was taken by Mars before) - again 12 characters on the
stage (!) - a midheaven.

We
can treat this horoscope like a normal horoscope, but we have to
keep in mind that it is not our chart, but the chart of this one
person within us. We have to take care not to take this horoscope
for the whole.

Persona
charts are horoscopes of independent personalities - we cannot stress
this often enough. Personalities inside me. The birth chart is the
horoscope of the most important inner personality, of my Sun. (Therefore
the Sun does not get an extra persona chart, because the horoscope
this personality would have a year after birth - that is when the
Sun returns to the place it had at birth - has already a different
name: it is called Solar Return Chart).
All the other inner personalities are
relegated to second place in "traditional" astrology.

Persona
charts are horoscopes which promote the other personalities beside
the Sun to the rank of protagonists. They take these personalities
more seriously than the birth chart does. We think it is really
unfair that on the stage of life only the one (Sun) protagonist
is endowed with a biography, and that only his life is given description.
The other personalities are simply seen as minor characters. For
this reason we want to provide a method which allows the reader
to provide the other characters with biographies (i.e. life descriptions)
of their own. It will occur to you that these personalities have
unjustly been neglected for so long, and - to go even further -
that they themselves have an ego and their own members of the cast!

Twelve (Archetypal) Personalities

Our system of persona
charts consists of twelve inner personalities. But they can relate
to each other, and these relations turn into independent personalities
themselves. If each archetype, each individual personality relates
to one other archetype, we get 66 different individual personalities.
(And with relations of three, there are already 220.)

Here are our basic twelve:

Personality 1: "The warrior"
If I want to know more about the strength of my warrior, or my capability
to assert myself in the world aggressively, about my way of fighting,
whether I am a coward or a hero, what I find worth fighting for
and by what means - I look at my Mars persona chart.

Personality 2: "The beauty"
If I want to know more about my security or insecurities, my values
and self-worth, my sensuality, my sexual desire and my general capability
to enjoy - I look at my Venus persona chart.

Personality 3: "The intellectual"
If I want to know more about my flexibility, about my (verbal and
mimic) interaction with the outer world, about my way of functioning,
my communicative competence, my intelligence - I look at my Mercury
persona chart.

Personality 4: "The mother" ("The little child")
If I want to know more about my femininity, my feelings, my inner
child and my feeling of security and comfort, i.e. the feminine
part of my psyche - I look at my Moon persona chart. We consider
this persona chart (beside the birth chart) the most important instrument
for exploring a person's inner world.

Personality 5: "The hero" ("The father")
If I want to know more about my vitality, my Ego, the life force
inside me - I need to look at my Sun persona chart. But, in fact,
I have got it already, as it is my birth horoscope!

Personality 6: "Reason" ("The reprimanding person")
If I want to know more about my way of dealing with the necessities
and constraints of life, about the circumstances I have to adapt
to, and about the things I have to accept - I look at my Mercury
persona chart (which is identical with the persona chart of person
3).

Personality 7: "The other"
If I want to know more about my relationship with other people,
with partners, and with the world - I must look at my Venus persona
chart (the same as for person 2).

Personality 8: "The fanatic"
If I want to know more about the way I can deal with the demonic,
with the god of the underworld, with the forces which want to prevent
me from living - I must look at my Pluto persona chart.

Personality 9: "The philosopher"
If I want to know more about the meaningfulness of my life, about
the therapist inside me, about the role "religio" plays in my life
- I take a look at my Jupiter persona chart.

Personality 10: "The old man or woman" ("The guardian
of the law")
If I want to know more about "law", about my higher calling, my
vocation or about the truths fate wants to teach me (which I do
not want to learn) - I look at my Saturn persona chart.

Personality 11: "The liberator"
If I want to know more about the area of my life in which I must
free myself from ties, about my way of realising liberty and independence
- I look at my Uranus persona chart.

Personality 12: "The master"
If I want to know more about the transition from lie to truth, about
the world of "maya", of illusion, and about how to transcend illusion
to get to the world behind the world - I look at my Neptune persona
chart.

The Appearance of Inner Personalities

Our inner personas appear
on different levels of consciousness. Therefore, they have different
ways of appearing in our lives. We can visualise this fact with
the help of a three dimensional horoscope or live stage. The level
in the center shows those personas whom we are aware of, the top
and bottom level show unconscious parts of our personality. The
unconscious levels do not need to be limited to two, and, of course
there can be different degrees of (un)consciousness.

From a psychological
point of view, it makes sense to distinguiush four levels of consciousness
on which the inner personalities can appear in our lives:

1. Personalities with whom we identify ourselves
There is a consensus between them and our conscious self. They are
endowed with energies and take part in my conscious encounter with
the world. This means they are honoured, polished and sent into
world as representatives of my will and self-image. They are what
we call "ambassadors" in diplomatic language. A country sends a
representative to another country in order to be represented there
with dignity. The ambassador's task is to make an impression.

2. Personalities with whom we do not identify,
but whose appearance and manner we know nevertheless
They do not receive identifying energies from me, they are no ambassadors,
because I treat them as "persona non grata". They are unwelcome
participants in my (life) drama. I know that they exist, and I even
know that they are right in what they say. I also know that they
have a right to take part in my play, but whenever they appear on
stage, I try to get rid of them as quickly as possible. They have
fallen out of favour as representatives of my country, and I refuse
to give them enough energy to enable them to realise their intentions
(they often appear as "admonitory or reprimanding voice").

3. Personalities whom I do not know, and whose
real mission is "secret", i.e. it is unconscious
They never confront me openly with their true views and attitudes,
but work quietly and inconspicuously towards their own aims and
interests, and these are not the interests of the conscious person.
In our example of diplomatic language, this means: They are the
special agents of our own secret service, who work within our own
embassy, but for a different ministry, and about whom the ambassador
has not been informed. These personalities serve different masters,
and this is what confuses me deeply. Since I am not allowed to know
about their secret mission - and do not want to know as I dislike
the secret service for reasons of honour and moral cleanness - there
is a conflict of interests.

4. Personalities whom I do not know, whose mission
is as secret as that of the third kind of personalities, who do
not confront me directly, but who are actively working towards my
destruction and ruin
Figuratively speaking, this means that they are members of a foreign
secret service within my embassy. They appear to come from a hostile
secret service, and to collect material against me within my own
walls. This material is designed to lead to my physical ruin. They
want to occupy my country.

Personalities of the
fourth kind can be considered the core of the MPD-syndrome as described
by psychiatrists. Insofar it seems clear that "multiples" are always
in great danger of self-destruction through suicide. Even more,
the phenomenon of suicide on the whole appears to be initiated by
a personality of the fourth kind. The reason why they are rarely
successful is that personalities of the third kind try to prevent
self-destruction. There is, just like in any good spy thriller,
a fight within the own embassy between agents of the home country
against the agents of a foreign country. And the ambassador is usually
unaware of it all.

The transfer of inner
personalities to the outside, for example to a psychotherapist makes
the issue of the so-called psychological "transference" (and "counter
transference") plausible. A personality is indeed "carried over"
("trans-ferred"). But this "release"
mechanism does not only work with a therapist. If a personality
(of the third or fourth kind) is not allowed to come to light, it
is possible that it manifests itself in the outside world, in the
projection onto people surrounding me. The awareness that what confronts
me in the outside world is part of my own inner self helps to promote
these inner personalities into consciousness and grant them their
proper place in my life.

Tips for Interpretation

The following recommendations
are simply suggestions which need to be tested, and which are meant
to help you to explore unknown territory: your own inner world.

1) The most important unconscious personality
is the ruler of the first house of the birth chart. If you
have, for example, a libra ascendant, the main thing is to explore
your Venus persona chart. There's always a good surprise in the
persona chart of the ruler of the ascendant.

2) The persona chart of the Moon informs
you about the energies of the feminine side of your psyche. Just
like the birth horoscope can be called the yang horoscope, we describe
the Moon persona chart as the yin horoscope, its female counterpart.
To access and understand her, you have to look at feelings buried
deep inside.

3) The ascendant of a persona chart
shows the deepest sphere of the unconscious which has to be found
and understood by this personality. The ascendant of an unconscious
inner personality also shows the forces which want to come to light,
and which want to make their way to the surface with a great boost.

4) A persona chart's Sun is always
considered the ego of this inner personality. But not THE ego! Saturn,
for example, possesses an ego, a will to realise itself which speaks
the words "I want ...". Part of this persona chart ego is known
from the birth chart, because the Sun of the persona chart always
occupies the place which is held by the planet itself in the birth
chart. However, the house placing of this persona ego is completely
unknown. Just for the sake of finding out the house placing of the
persona ego within its own chart, creating a persona chart makes
sense. Not only does it tell us how this personality articulates
itself, but also where it does so, i.e. in which sphere of life.

5) The midheaven of a persona chart shows
which fate the individual personalities encounter here on earth.
It is the quintessence of the path which leads from the "unconscious"
(ascendant) to the "light of consciousness" (midheaven). Whether
this path is followed to the very end by the individual cannot be
known. Whether the inner personalities come to consciousness, appears
to depend on the intensity of the effort put into the venture, and
on individual achievement.

It seems to us that a
human who has integrated all inner personalities into full consciousness
would have finished his way here on earth. We might deduce a law
from this: Each inner personality I have found, renders my world
poorer by one person. If the world outside does not owe me any more
(inner) personalities, it may well be that it has fulfilled its
function and may I leave.

Twelve Hypotheses

From their
astrological experience as well as their therapeutical work with
clients, the authors have distilled the following twelve hypotheses.

Hypothesis 1: Our inner self
contains twelve personalities, each with different needs and interests,
and each with different kinds of energies which help them to realise
and satisfy these needs. These energies are also different in every
human.

Hypothesis 2: These twelve personalities
have to confront us at times from the outside. In order to perceive
them as part of our inner self, we have to meet them in the outside
world - only then do we concentrate on them sufficiently.

Hypothesis 3: Most of these
inner personalities remain unidentified by us, they remain strangers.

Hypothesis 4: That which is not
identified by my conscious self can do as it pleases inside me.
I do perceive the visible symptoms of the workings of these unidentified
personalities, but not the "real" personalities with all their needs.

Hypothesis 5: A personality
working against me means that I do not want to let it take part
in my conscious life, I do not want it to be part of my world. I
try to label it as "unconscious" because it offends my pleasure
principle and hurts my ego.

Hypothesis 6: My inner personalities
prepare their entry into my life for a long time before they actually
appear in the outside world. They confront me from the outside (cf.
thesis 2) because I must get to know them in a way which allows
me to perceive them, and then accept them as part of myself. My
psyche is now prepared to integrate this personality, even if it
is connected with a momentary phase of desperation and hopelessness
which makes me suffer.

Hypothesis 7: As long as I do
not know all my inner personalities, I do not know any of them.
Therefore it is no good thinking: "Well, at least I have identified
four personalities. They are on the plus side of my account." Behind
every conscious personality there is at least one (if not more)
unconscious personality who remains unknown to the conscious personality,
and who manipulates its thinking or action.

Hypothesis 8: Some of my inner
personalities cannot be identified by the conscious self, because
they do not wish to come to the light of consciousness. Especially
(inner) personalities who have met a dramatic (mostly sexual) trauma
in their childhood desperately try not to become identified. These
personalities haunt the spheres of the unconscious as eminently
destructive forces. They become dark shadows which interfere in
our conscious doings and terrorise our lives unimaginably.

Hypothesis 9: Every higher being,
every guru or spiritual leader (projected to the outside) is nothing
but a personality of the third (sometimes of the fourth) kind
who "speaks" to me because it is part of my self. The only "beyond"
or "transcendental" about these beings is that they are beyond my
consciousness (i.e. within my unconscious). Their messages do not
come from Alpha Centauri, but from my inner self, and they want
to show me a problem within this inner self. Therefore, these messages
- however wise they might sound - have to be considered in the psychodynamic
context of my own self. Only then do they make sense.

Hypothesis 10: All unconscious
inner personalities of the third (or fourth) kind
contain a deeply manifested mechanism: They want to come to the
light of consciousness. This is what they work for, even if our
conscious self does not understand the means they use. They do not
feel comfortable in the diaspora of the psyche, in their exile to
which they are condemned. Therefore they work for their discovery.
But paradoxically, the real enemy whom they have to confront is
consciousness itself. I do not want to allow these personalities
to become conscious, and I will do anything to keep them hidden
in the dark cellars of the unconscious.

Hypothesis 11: Inner personalities
have to be met on their own level inside the psyche. It is important
to communicate with them in their "home sphere". Since personalities
of the third and fourth kind live
in the depths of my psyche, it is necessary to descend to the depths,
which means we need to create a different state of consciousness.
Tried and tested as well as safe means to this end are trance, breathing
techniques, music and light.

Hypothesis 12: Each person confronting
me from the outside at any given time is a clear message that the
parallel inner personality inside me is now prepared to come out
into the open. This personality is always of the second, third or
fourth kind. Personalities of the
first kind do not need to be met outside, since I am already aware
of them as part of myself. But since personalities of deeper spheres
tend to interfere in the business of personalities in the surface
area, it appears to me as if I have met a lovely sympathetic person
who I can easily identify with, and with whom I could even fall
in love. These people show themselves at their (i.e. my) best. But
after a while they have to show their other side, and show me the
Janus face of my own deeper spheres. This is the meaning of my life
drama: those expelled and banished personalities have to return
to me one by one.

Persona Charts at Astrodienst

We at Astrodienst have
taken up Orban/Zinnel's idea, and can offer you persona charts in various
varieties. You can buy persona chart drawings in our shop (only in German), or
look at your nine persona charts in the "Extended chart selection" of "Free Horoscopes".

Of course, this concept
can be developed further, and some of the more curious astrologers
will certainly cast persona charts for Chiron, (both!) Moon's Nodes,
ascendants or midheavens.

As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.